World's Richest Man Opens His Soumaya Museum In Mexico City

In Mexico City, the world's richest man has officially given his gift to the city: Carlos Slim Helu's new Soumaya Museum is now open to the public.

The museum, designed by his architect son-in-law Fernando Romero, is open to the public for free and houses Slim's vast art collection—reportedly 70,000 pieces, spanning works by Rodin, Leonardo da Vinci and other European artists as well as those by Mexican muralists Diego Rivera and David Alfaro Siqueiros, to name just a few.

Only a small handful of the world's 1,210 billionaires can claim to have their own museum, though many have vast art collections. In Los Angeles, billionaire Eli Broad is overseeing the construction of "The Broad," a new building downtown near MOCA (the museum of Contemporary Art) on Grand Ave. It will house his collection of contemporary art. (He's also got a museum-within-a-museum at the L.A. County Art Museum, called the Broad Contemporary Art Museum. But he's amassed enough art to fill more than one spot.) Across the country in Potomac, Maryland, industrialist Mitchell Rales has put his collection of Richard Serra sculptures and works by artists including Jackson Pollock and Robert Rauschenberg in his Glenstone Museum Foundation—a museum that requires reservations to visit. (It's a rather unusual experience to visit, as this article from the Washington City Paper noted in 2008.)

Other billionaires with their own museums:

Ronald Lauder, investor and heir to the Estee Lauder cosmetics fortune, has the Neue Galerie on Fifth Ave. in New York, a museum dedicated to German and Austrian art.

French retailing billionaire Francois Pinault, whose art collection is estimated to be worth $1.7 billion, owns the Palazzo Grassi in Venice, where much of his work is displayed. He also displays contemporary art in the Punta della Dogana, a grand, triangular-shaped 17th century customs house at the base of the Grand Canal, under a 30-year agreement with the city of Venice. (This was a coup: he beat out the Guggenheim for the space.) Pinault also owns art auction house Christie's.

Germany's Reinhold Wurth, who took over his father's screw business, built an empire of all kinds of fasteners. His Wurth Collection in the southern German city of Kunzeslau, includes 14,000 works of art including pieces by Pablo Picasso, Edvard Munch and Max Ernst.

Lee Kun-Hee of South Korea. The chairman of Samsung Group opened the Samsung Museum of Art in Seoul in 2004. It houses traditional and contemporary Korean and international art.

Victor Pinchuk of the Ukraine opened the PinchukArtCentre in Kiev in 2006 to house his collection of Ukranian and international contemporary art.

Hiroshi Yamauchi of Japan. The founder of Nintendo opened the Shigureden Museum in Kyoto in 2006. It displays Ogura Hyakunin Isshu, an anthology of 100 poems by 100 poets, using digital technology from Nintendo.

Carlos Slim has taken heat for his lack of philanthropy (compared to the size of his $74 billion fortune) and his unwillingness to sign on to the Giving Pledge, a movement by Bill Gates and Warren Buffett that encourages the wealthy to give half their riches to charity. The Soumaya Museum is worth just a fraction of Slim's stake in Latin American wireless phone company America Movil, but it is nonetheless a positive step on Slim's philanthropic path.